13. DE QUINCEY took O. occasionally for ten years, experiencing only its exaltation. A gastralgia which then supervened led him to take it daily, gradually increasing the dose till it reached to some 8000 dr. of laudanum. After describing the intellectual torpor and profound melancholy thus caused, he writes:
a. “I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to the history and journal of what took place in my dreams, for these were the immediately and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy was from the reawakening of a state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness all sorts of phantoms; in some that power is merely a mechanic affection of the eyes, others have a voluntary or semi – voluntary power to dismiss or summon them, or, as a child once said to me, when I questioned him on the matter, ‘I call tell them to go, and they go, but sometimes they come when I don’t’s tell them to come. ‘ Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. In the middle of 1817, I think it was that this faculty became positively distressing to me; at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before Oedipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented, nightly, spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts may be mentioned as noticeable at this time: 1. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point, – that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so that I feared to exercise this faculty; for as Midas turned all things to gold, that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye, and, by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the great chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendour that fretted my heart. 2. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were accompanied by deep – seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend – not metaphorically, but literally to descend – into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I should ever reascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon, because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least at utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by words. 3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not gifted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or 100 years in one night, nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience. 4. The minutes incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not be said to recollect them, for if I had been told of them when waking I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I recognised them instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutes incidents, arranged before her simultaneously as in a mirror, and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experience of mine, I can believe; I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true, namely, that the dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away the veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.”
b. “In the early stage of my malady the splendour of my dreams was chiefly architectural, and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds…. To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes, and silvery expanses of water…. The water now changed their character, – from translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous changes, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through many mouths, promised an abiding torment, and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens; faces, imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries; my agitation was infinite; my mind tossed and swayed with the ocean.”
c. “One memorial of my former condition still remains” (i. evening after he had reduced his dosage to a minimum); “my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents, when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton) ‘with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.”
d. “The symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of the experiments” – of leaving the drug almost entirely off – “were these: enormous irritability and excitement of the whole system, the stomach in particular” (in which he had become “aware of an increasing callousness or defect of sensibility”) “resorted to a full feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain; unceasing restlessness night and day; sleep – I scarcely knew what it was – 3 hours out of the 24 was the utmost I had, and that so agitated and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me; lower jaw constantly swelling; mouth ulcerated; and many other distressing symptoms that would be tedious to repeat, amongst which, however, I must mention one, because it had never failed to accompany any attempt to renounce O., – namely, violent sternutation. This now became exceedingly troublesome, sometime lasting for 2 hours at once, and recurring at least twice or three times a day.” He speaks also of “the excessive perspiration, which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in the daily quantum of O., and which in July was so violent as to oblige me to use a bath 5 or 6 times day.” ( Confessions of an Opium Eater.)
14. In 1841 an opium eater, aet. 26, was admitted into the London Hospital. He was accustomed to take of solid O. daily. He originally began its use to relieve the attacks of angina pectoris. He was now most anxious to leave off this habit, though the difficulty of doing so was extreme. It did not diminish, but, according to his assertion, augmented his appetite; for each dose he ate voraciously. At first when he commended its use it caused dryness of mouth and throat, and constipation; but latterly his bowels have been as regular as usual. His pulse ranged from 88 to 96. His urine was somewhat less than natural. The condition of his skin varied; in generally it was dry, but occasionally was covered with profuse perspiration. He described the effects of the O. on his mental faculties as those of calmness, comfort, and serenity. Under its use he was able to support great mental and bodily fatigue. He never experienced the exhilarating and pleasurable sensations described by de Quincey. His feelings, when not under the influence of O., were most distressing. At this time his eyes were hollow, dark, and sunken; features haggard; hands trembling; voice and manner anxious; mouth parched; appetite wanting; sleeplessness. Unable to sleep for want of his accustomed dose, he used to pace the ward of the hospital at n. almost frantic, though quite sensible of his miserable condition, and anxious to abandon the practice. (PEREIRA, op. cit., sub voce.)
Hughes was a great writer and a scholar. He actively cooperated with Dr. T.F. Allen to compile his 'Encyclopedia' and rendered immeasurable aid to Dr. Dudgeon in translating Hahnemann's 'Materia Medica Pura' into English. In 1889 he was appointed an Editor of the 'British Homoeopathic Journal' and continued in that capacity until his demise. In 1876, Dr. Hughes was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Organization of the International Congress of Homoeopathy Physicians in Philadelphia. He also presided over the International Congress in London.